


Origin

by basking



Category: Tackey & Tsubasa
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basking/pseuds/basking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsubasa's mission goes wrong. (Ninja!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Origin

Hideaki’s latest mission involves several days of holding still on ledges and an overabundance of eavesdropping on spectacularly boring people. He does something to his shoulder that makes it ache to lift his arm, but otherwise he escapes the whole ordeal unscathed. By the end of the mission, all Hideaki wants is to go home and spend the night with Tsubasa and some wine. He already has the taste under his tongue as he sprints down the mountain path, wine that’s just this side of sweet coating Tsubasa’s mouth, running in slick lines down his neck—

Hideaki arrives home while the sun is still overhead to find nearly every house quiet and abandoned. Only Ryo seems to be guarding the village, practicing drills in front of the house that their team shares.

“You’re back early,” Ryo tells him, lowering his sword.

Hideaki sets his pack down on the grass and asks, “Where is everyone?”

“Five or six local shrines were burned to the ground while you were gone,” Ryo tells him. “And there are rumors that there’s been more damage up north, so most of the teams are gone investigating. Ours was split up and sent to cover the areas nearby.”

“So who’s guarding the village right now?” Hideaki asks.

“Me and Ninomiya-kun. Tsubasa-kun _was_ here, but he headed south this morning for his mission. So, yes. Just me and Ninomiya-kun and you, senpai.”

Smartass. “Want a sparring partner?”

They start without weapons, since Ryo admits that his form needs improvement. It’s been at least two months since they last trained together, and Ryo’s gotten cagier and quicker, but as soon as Hideaki narrows his focus, he catches Ryo’s elbow easily and twists him to the ground. As he goes down, the hem of Ryo’s yukata falls down his arm and exposes his heavily wrapped shoulder. “When did that happen?” Hideaki asks.

Ryo says, “Two days ago,” with a wince and then, hastily, “I thought it had healed.”

More like he thought that binding his shoulder tighter than the skin of a drum would make the wound easier to ignore.

Hideaki doesn’t point out the patch of red soaking through the cloth and offers his hand instead. “I’ll walk you back,” he says, pulling Ryo gently to his feet.

They return to the house at a slow pace, their footsteps drowned by the noise of cicadas chirruping. “Do you have any idea where Tsubasa was going?” Hideaki asks.

“No. He didn’t seem to want to leave, though. He did drills in the yard all night, and then he left around dawn.”

Explains the deep scuff marks in the dirt far from where Ryo was training. Hideaki leads Ryo to the bottom of the narrow staircase and watches Ryo navigate his way up to his room on the second floor.

“Go slow,” Hideaki calls after him.

“I know, I know.”

Hideaki brings his pack to his room and scans the floor and closet for any kind of note. When he finds none, he forces his attention elsewhere. If Tsubasa’s just doing reconnaissance, he’ll be back soon.

Hideaki unpacks and bathes and then measures the distance between the sun and the horizon. If he’s quick, he can use the last hour or so of sunlight to write out the details of his mission. He brings his scrolls to Tsubasa’s westward-facing room and sets up a small writing desk near the window. He listens to Ryo shuffling around upstairs, hampered by his injury, and manages to get the first two days of his mission scrawled out using shorthand.

When the sun sets, Hideaki ties up the scrolls and takes Tsubasa’s futon and a small wooden box filled with strips of cloth from the closet. Tsubasa nearly never needs medical attention when he returns from missions — he’s acquired a lifelong instinct for dodging learned from innumerable blows to the head while they were in training — but he’ll probably appreciate the gesture just the same.

Wrapped in blankets infused with Tsubasa’s scent, Hideaki shifts to accommodate his sore shoulder and closes his eyes, evening out his breathing and relaxing his muscles until his mind settles into a blank calm.

 

In between opening his eyes and darting to the corner where Tsubasa keeps his shuriken, Hideaki identifies the noise that woke him as someone running up the the dirt road leading up to the house. He meets Ryo and Nino at the main door and waits next to the door for the intruder’s next move.

The pounding instantly sets Hideaki’s nerves at ease, and in his peripheral vision, he sees Ryo and Nino lower their swords.

“TAKIZAWA!” Murakami bellows.

Hideaki frowns at the note of urgency in Murakami’s voice and shoves the door open.

The front of Murakami’s yukata is dark with sweat and his face is dark red with exertion. “Tsubasa-kun said he’d stop by after his mission, but he hasn’t showed yet, and Yoko heard people on the road talking about an ambush in some ocean village near where he was headed. Is he here?”

Hideaki knows he’s not, and Ryo confirms it with a low, “No, he isn’t.”

Nino dashes outside, heading for the forest, and Hideaki realizes what he’s thinking: if Tsubasa’s injured, he might have fallen before he made it home.

Murakami says, “He left this,” and drops a thick chip of wood into Hideaki’s palm.

The sides are as rough as Hideaki remembers, but the edges have been worn smooth and the scent of the sea has faded. He hasn’t seen this in ten years, not since Tsubasa unwrapped it from a small square of cloth and let him hold it and explained to him, “It was part of my parents’ house.”

Hideaki closes his fist around it and bolts back into the house to retrieve his sword.

 

He runs south down a roughly-carved road until he’s wrenched his shoulder to the point of feeling scalded and he can’t breathe. He slows to a jog, panting, and doesn’t slow down any more than that until he can see the roofs of Tsubasa’s home village hugging the coast. As he approaches the small ocean town, Hideaki smells smoke. On the main road, Hideaki stops a merchant and his escort to question them about it.

“Inn’s burned down,” the man slurs.

The escort he’s with is more helpful. “I saw a whole group of men on the road early this morning carrying weapons and torches. They burned down the inn and went to the temple for purification,” she says.

Hideaki tightens his hand around the hilt of his sword. “No one’s gone after them?”

“The innkeeper was corrupt,” she says. She doesn’t sound like she believes it. “Please excuse us.” She bows her head, curt, and tugs on the merchant’s sleeve. He gives Hideaki a cheerful farewell and a sloppy wave goodbye, then stumbles off with his escort into the heart of the quiet village.

Hideaki follows the road up a gradual incline for several long minutes until he finds what’s left of the inn. It’s been almost a full day since it burned, and even the embers have gone dark. Hideaki pushes and kicks aside thick black bricks of burned wood still pouring out smoke until he’s scoured every trace of what’s left. Fighting the bile rising in his throat, Hideaki stops in the center and tells himself he would smell human remains if there were any. All he can parse out are the smells of burnt wood and tatami and oil.

Straight ahead, he spots a small temple near the forest. He leaves the inn behind, running full-tilt and forcing in short, shallow breaths.

He recognizes the symbol freshly carved into the gate — it’s a fusion of two crests belonging to clans from neighboring areas. Every one of Hideaki’s teammates has assassinated at least one member of both clans in attempts to wipe them both out entirely. At last count, Tsubasa had four low-ranking men to his name, but he may have added more when they attacked him earlier.

Hideaki skirts the periphery of the grounds out of the firelight’s reach and passes through the long shadow of the temple’s pagoda, leaving behind the usual noises of the lower ranks — shouting and laughing and iron and metal — in search of quieter tones belonging to more powerful men. He crouches behind the temple bell as a pair of monks pass, their expressions serene despite the obscenities and filth scarring their temple grounds. He watches them go, then scans the surrounding buildings. Only one — the assembly hall — is lit, and Hideaki can make out at least three silhouettes on the walls.

And blood on the stairs.

Hideaki’s vision whites out. He feels the ground under his feet and recognizes the pain of his sword hilt grating against the callouses on his fingers, but he’s blind until he’s up the stairs and through the door and he’s faced with Tsubasa’s sword broken in half on the floor before him.

Hideaki exhales.

The men around him scramble to their feet, shouting and reaching for their weapons. Hideaki forces in a breath and swings until the first throat opens under his blade. He wields his sword without finesse or control and he expects at every moment to be cut down, but somehow he continues shredding and mangling until there’s only one man left alive.

One man left to interrogate.

Hideaki presses his foot down on his windpipe and —

_Hide-kun._

Hideaki freezes. He’s convinced he imagined it. Quiet and hoarse, but —

“ _Hide-kun_.”

Hideaki tears his blade through the man’s throat and continues deeper into the hall, running past heavily-marked maps pinned to the walls. He can bring them back to the village, give them to his superiors, once he’s got Tsubasa—

There—on the floor of the ceremonial platform, bound, bruised, and bleeding.

Hideaki climbs the platform, breathing raggedly, and doesn’t bother wiping his sword before breaking through the ropes. He touches Tsubasa’s cheek, feather-light, then presses his fingertips over the rest of his body, taking inventory of each injury and measuring the severity of every wound while Tsubasa leans on his chest and breathes into his shoulder with a disturbing rattle. Once Hideaki’s convinced that Tsubasa’s not mortally wounded, he seizes the back of Tsubasa’s collar and clenches his fist around the warmth of it.

“I thought I’d find your head on display at the gate,” Hideaki tells him.

“No, no. I’m a well-behaved captive,” Tsubasa murmurs. “They liked me.”

Hideaki grins, closes his eyes, and presses his mouth to Tsubasa’s hair. It’s rough and matted with blood in some places, but also warm and soft in others. “Can you run?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Tsubasa takes a breath and grips Hideaki’s bicep. He stumbles, winces, and almost goes to his knees, but Hideaki supports his weight until he’s on his feet. He waits, watching Tsubasa’s face with forced calm, and after a few seconds, Tsubasa nods, grimacing. “I’m okay,” he says, “let’s go.”

Hideaki says, “Go out the back. I’ll meet you there.”

Tsubasa echoes, “Meet you there,” and squeezes Hideaki’s wrist.

When Tsubasa lets go of him, Hideaki almost changes his mind. But his superiors will want the maps, and more importantly, he has to move the bodies out of sight to help his and Tsubasa’s odds of escaping undetected.

That doesn’t stop him from returning to the front room at a pace just slow enough that he can hear Tsubasa climb through the window.

 

They run north at a fast clip. It’s clearly rough on Tsubasa, but he doesn’t complain. They both know they should get about halfway home before they start to slow down, so even when Tsubasa’s knees give out, he insists that he can keep going if they rest for a bit. Hideaki silently objects, pressing his lips to Tsubasa’s temple and then crouching with one hand splayed on the ground.

“Come on,” Hideaki urges. “You’re not heavy.”

After a moment of pained silence, Tsubasa reluctantly wraps his arms around Hideaki’s neck and Hideaki lifts him, wheezing.

“Shut up,” Tsubasa says, cuffing his head awkwardly. Hideaki smiles over his shoulder and palms Tsubasa’s wrist.

He continues on an intricate path through the forest, keeping the same pace despite the fatigue he can feel settling in. Whenever the ache in his shoulder spikes, he just lifts Tsubasa higher on his back and takes strength from the sound of Tsubasa’s breath in his ear.

“You can put me down,” Tsubasa tells him quietly at some point. “I’m fine now.”

Hideaki responds to that by jogging faster.

He hears Tsubasa inhale to protest again, so Hideaki interrupts him, “That was clever, what you gave to Murakami-kun.”

“Ah, that? I wondered if you’d figure it out,” Tsubasa says. “I wanted to wait until you came home so I could tell you where I was going, but you were late.”

Hideaki glances up at him, amused. “I said I’d be back in a week. How did that translate to four days in your mind?”

“You always come home before you say you will.”

Hideaki makes a neutral sound; it’s probably true.

When the trees start to look familiar, Hideaki stops to let Tsubasa down and Tsubasa immediately zeroes in on Hideaki’s shoulder. He closes his hand on the sorest spot and, despite Hideaki’s success in suppressing a wince, Tsubasa frowns and asks, “What did you do?”

Hideaki sighs and gives a reluctant summary of his mission while Tsubasa carefully massages the muscle.

“How long did you hang from the roof?” Tsubasa asks, amused.

“Long,” Hideaki says.

Tsubasa says, “Masterful choice of strategy,” and just smiles when Hideaki mimes a cuff at his head. “Oh, do you still have what I gave Murakami-kun?”

Hideaki startles. “Right!” He pulls the wood chip out of his interior pocket and hands it to Tsubasa, ashamed he didn’t think to give it back sooner. “Sorry.”

Tsubasa curls his arm around Hideaki’s neck and presses his lips to the corner of Hideaki’s mouth. “Thank you,” he says. Then again, quieter.

Hideaki swallows and rubs his thumb against a streak of dried blood on Tsubasa’s forehead. At first it seems like an injury, but to Hideaki’s relief, the blood flakes away and leaves unbroken skin in its wake.

Tsubasa turns his head and kisses Hideaki’s wrist, his lips parted and his breath wet on Hideaki’s pulse. Hideaki winds both arms tight around Tsubasa’s shoulders and grips the warm cloth there, knuckles white and aching from the strain.

 

Later, after Ryo’s helped Hideaki clean out the worst of Tsubasa’s wounds, Hideaki brings a cloth and a bowl of water to Tsubasa’s room to soothe the rope burn on his arms and legs and wash off the grit accumulated from the forest. Tsubasa humors him, lying back on his futon and allowing Hideaki to untie his yukata and see the full damage done to his body.

The lantern by Tsubasa’s futon is half-full with the last of their house’s monthly ration of oil; Nino handed over the jar earlier without a word. The weak light offers a kind view of Tsubasa’s injuries, but the sheer number of them — purpled bruises, deep nicks, jagged cuts — have Hideaki making each pass with the cloth lighter and lighter until he’s hardly touching Tsubasa’s skin at all.

There’s a particularly ugly gash below Tsubasa’s throat, and Hideaki doesn’t realize he’s staring at it until Tsubasa sits up and takes the cloth.

“I’ll do it,” he says, and as he guides the stained cloth carefully but firmly over his chest, Hideaki inspects the rest of him. Grey smear under his arm, black splotch under his ribs, dark purple row of bruises across his thigh and side, scabbed-over wounds on his arms and chest and throat—

Hideaki covers the gash with his right hand, twisting the fingers of his left deep into Tsubasa’s wet hair, and drags him into a kiss. He feels Tsubasa’s pulse pounding under his palm and opens his mouth as Tsubasa changes angles to kiss him deeper. The cloth drops to the floor and Hideaki moves his left hand out of Tsubasa’s hair to tightly interlock their fingers. The gash under his right hand feels ragged and dry and hot and far too deep.

Tsubasa pulls Hideaki down onto the futon with an arm around his neck, pressing open-mouthed kisses on Hideaki’s jaw and throat and clavicle. Hideaki straddles him and passes his thumb over the gash. From the feel of it, it could scar.

“We should make that a custom,” Hideaki murmurs. “To leave something with Murakami in case one of us has to leave while the other’s away.”

Tsubasa pushes his fingers through Hideaki’s hair. “He’ll probably enjoy that job,” he says.

“And if he doesn’t, Yokoyama-kun certainly will.”

Tsubasa laughs, and Hideaki smiles. He shakes his hand free of Tsubasa’s to frame his face with both hands and kisses him rough and soundless. He sucks on Tsubasa’s lower lip while he traces the path of the gash back and forth. Tsubasa arches against Hideaki’s hand, opening his mouth for a sound that isn’t quite pain, and when Hideaki pushes harder, Tsubasa gasps halfway through Hideaki’s name.

Hideaki shivers, panting into Tsubasa’s slick mouth. "You know what?" he says, presses their foreheads together. “I have a better idea.“

“Mm?“ Tsubasa pulls Hideaki's hand away from his chest to his mouth and cleans his own blood off Hideaki's fingers.

Hideaki shudders. “Maybe we should work as a team. Just us.”

Tsubasa smiles, and somehow the streak of red on his lips doesn't make it look any less endearing. “I accept your proposal,” he says with just the edge of a smirk.

Hideaki opens his mouth to protest, but since that's basically what he meant, he lets it go.

“Look after me,” Tsubasa says, kissing up Hideaki's throat, "partner."

Hideaki palms Tsubasa's back, across the map of raised and broken skin, and nods.


End file.
